TITLE:
Acceptability of Ambulatory Surgical Services and Its Predictors among Residents of Budondo Sub-County—Jinja District, Uganda
AUTHORS:
Anna Turumanya Kalumuna
KEYWORDS:
Acceptability, Ambulatory Surgery, Predictors, Jinja District
JOURNAL NAME:
Surgical Science,
Vol.14 No.3,
March
13,
2023
ABSTRACT: Background: 25% of all people requiring surgical care are not able to access it due to its high cost. These people stand a high
risk of preventable severe morbidity and mortality due to poor prognosis
of surgically correctable illnesses. Ambulatory
surgical care services are significantly cheaper than orthodox surgical care and have become very relevant in this
time and age where health conditions that can only be treated with
surgical intervention are on the rise. The acceptability of ambulatory surgical
care services will determine how this model increases universal health
coverage. Objective: To assess the acceptability of ambulatory surgical
services and its predictors among residents of Budondo Sub-County—Jinja
district. Methods: The study was cross-sectional
targeting 371 household heads in Budondo Sub-County, which was stratified by parish, with villages in each randomly
sampled. Systematic random sampling was used
to sample households and households therein were purposively sampled.
Structured interviews and questionnaires were the data collection techniques,
and data was analyzed in SPSS version 25 using descriptive statistics and a
binomial logit model. Results: The level of acceptability of ambulatory surgical care services among
residents of Budondo Sub-County was found to be near-universal, at 96.5%. The
odds of accepting ambulatory surgical care were least among household heads who
agreed that surgery done in a hospital would be cheaper than surgery done at
community level (aOR = 0.174 [CI = 0.055 - 0.553]), those who had health
insurance (aOR = 0.105 [95% CI = 0.030 - 0.371]), and household heads who were
covered with private health insurance (aOR = 0.078 [95% CI = 0.008 - 0.792]).
Acceptability of ASC was higher among household heads who agreed that they would
trust ambulatory surgical centers with their life were more likely to accept
ambulatory surgical care (aOR = 1.124, [95% CI = 1.122 - 3.218], P = 0.000),
and household heads from households that had less than five members with
surgery history were twice as likely to accept ambulatory surgical care (aOR =
2.431 [95% CI = 1.122 - 5.898], P = 0.000). Conclusion: Acceptability of ambulatory surgical care services among residents
of Budondo Sub-County is high, and near-universal. It is mainly
predicted by intrapersonal correlates and to a small extent by
socio-demographic characteristics, with the implication that the administration
of Global Surgical Initiatives in Kyabirwa ought to focus on modifying or
uphold the intrapersonal characteristics found to be antagonists and
protagonists of acceptability, respectively.